1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a computer system and a method for automatically overclocking and, more particularly, to a computer system and a method for automatically overclocking utilizing a hard device.
2. Description of the Related Art
Manufacturers usually set a standard operating range for electronic components when the electronic components leave factories. Overclocking is a technique for improving clock speed of the electronic components and makes operating range of the electronic components above the standard operating range set by the manufacturers. For example, users can overclock a central processing unit (CPU) chipset from a standard operating range 2 GHz to 2.1 GHz. Therefore, overclocking improves the efficiency of the cheap electronic components close to the efficiency of the expensive electronic components to make the users feel the electronic components well worth the cost. Furthermore, the efficiency of computer system can be improved as the operating range of the electronic components is enlarged. Therefore, many users expect to overclock the electronic components to the best operating range to make the computer system achieve the best efficiency.
In conventional overclocking method, users need to make the computer system access into a basic input/output system (BIOS) during booting to self adjust related setup parameters. When users adjust the setup parameters to be ones that make the system crash, the BIOS will record the setup parameters before the system crashes. The computer system will operate according to the setup parameters when users reboot the computer system. Therefore, users can adjust the setup parameters again according to the setup parameters recorded in the BIOS. In this way, the setup parameters can be adjusted to the optimization by continuous trial and error. However, using the method depends on long-term accumulated experience of users and is very difficult for users who are unfamiliar with the computer system.
As a result, the industry develops overclocking software currently. The overclocking software increases frequency and tests stability of the computer system successively. If the computer system is stable after the frequency is increased, the overclocking software will increase frequency again and reboot the computer system. If the computer system crashes, an automatic recovery mechanism (for example, a watchdog timer is used for detecting whether timeout occurs, the occurrence of timeout means that the system crashes) will send a signal to the computer system to reboot the computer system and read the setup parameters before the system crashes. The overclocking software regards the setup parameters as the best parameters to accomplish automatic overclocking. However, in the method, the computer system has to crash at least once to achieve the best overclocking settings.